Skeptics' Conference - First Photos

(click images for a larger view)

The 4th International Conference on Climate Change opens in Chicago today. Sponsored by the Heartland Institute, there's a reception at 5 pm and, during dinner (which begins at six), Steve McIntyre from ClimateAudit.org will be a keynote speaker - along with former NASA astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt.

An introductory press event, held at noon on this gloriously sunny Sunday, was well attended - compared to the sparse media showing at the 3rd conference held last June (see photo #14 here). Roger Harrabin from the BBC is among the media contingent covering this 3-day conference, and one of the speakers at the press event was James Delingpole, whose Telegraph blog in the UK helped break the Climategate story.

Professor emeritus Don Easterbrook, who has studied and taught geology for the past 48 years (authoring three textbooks and 150 papers in the process), provided a sneak peek of research findings he'll be discussing tomorrow. These findings suggest a relationship between cyclical ocean events and temperature that appears far more compelling than the alleged relationship between atmospheric C02 content and temperature.

Here are a few quick pix from the media event:

James Delingpole

James Delingpole

Don Easterbrook

Don Easterbrook

One of the most distressing aspects of the climate change debate is the insistence on the part of folks such as Al Gore that all scientists of any standing agree that climate change is a crisis and that the only scientists who dissent are marginal and unpublished.

This is absolutely not the case. One may disagree with Schmitt or Easterbrook, but no honest person can dismiss these men's very real and impressive credentials.


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>> photos from the June 2009 skeptics' conference
>> If we don't agree you're crazy
>> Bullies need not apply
>> Climate skepticism is free speech
>> Al Gore blows tobacco smoke in our face - again